djkr and friends take on Life

i was bumbling around the internet when i stumbled upon a blog of a student at the miami ad school, one of the foremost advertising schools in the world. and he has a few sensible words for all advertising students out there.

talent does not play a part in whether you succeed in advertising. its the quantity of work you produce for each campaign. invariably, there will be crap in there. but the more you produce, the higher the chance that you will produce something outstanding and brilliant.

mount sophia is a rather nice place, if you discount the fact that you have to climb 139 steps every morning. it has a pretty serene environment, the lighting in the toilets is film worthy and timbre is outside my office.

week one has been rather kind to me. i have been eased into the process rather painlessly. work has come in slowly; i only had to do a writeup on a toolkit thus far. my supervisors/colleagues (they are the same) are quite nice. i got nothing much to complain about (maybe my $600 pay)

but oh, those 139 steps. it is an uphill struggle to drag yourself up those steps.  i guess its just one of those employee health benefits they don’t mention on the contract. climbing 139 steps every single day, that is sure to get your thighs into shape.

one week of internship has gone by.

for our first week, the interns from the 4 companies of alchemy, kult, nerf and avenueone met at alchemy for a week long boot camp, where alvin had arranged some of the staffers to come to talk to us, giving us a quick lessons on the industry. we even had an excursion to a colour separation place, a photography studio and a digital imaging place – which was admittedly very cool.

but i guess what i can be most proud of is the fact that one of our ideas that we worked on during boot camp has been actually submitted for consideration to a client. that met a burnt weekend (saturday 6pm to sunday 7am in office), but that is the motivation i need to keep going.

welcome to advertising, baby.

everyone who has been on the internet over the past few month must have seen them; those ads advertising for the latest online game evony. after seeing (for the umpteen time) another one of those ads boxed into a small square on the webpages i frequent today, i realised that the ads have actually evolved.

if you have been actually been living in a cave the last few weeks, evony is (supposedly) an online browser based game that the advertisements tout you can: 1. save the queen!, 2. play ‘discreetly’ 3. and will be free forever. and oh yes, the advertisements feature boobs quite prominently.

after doing a wiki and google search on it (ah, yes what would i do without dear wikipedia), i realised that the ads did evolve as time went by. i won’t post the pictures here but you can see for yourself here.

to be honest, i did not really notice them when they featured just the knight; it looked too generic and boring. who wants to play a game where the feature is a boring rusty stale old knight. the next ad with a sword pointed at a vulnerably posed, well endowed computer generated maiden DID capture my attention. you can’t really ignore phallic advertising can you. but no, still not interested.

not working?  lets put up real women on the ads. so now we have stock images of the generic model wearing a white dress staring longing out at you, asking you to ‘save’ them. no, still not catching my attention.

this is when the makers of evony decided, well, %)@# it, lets just put a pair boobs there. surely that will entice people to click on the link! they are boobs after all!

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evony’s advertising campaign reeks of desperation. there is plenty more i can go into (like how they are apparently run by a china WOW gold mining company) , but lets just focus on 2 aspects here: advertising and gaming.

from an advertising standpoint, the ads are actually meant to capture attention, and quite successfully so, even though there might be a  misrepresentation of what the game actually is. from what i have read online, there is no actual queen in the game. the official faq also writes:

How do I get my queen?
There is no queen in this game, the ad you saw is for marketing purposes and seems to be highly effective by the number of times this question has come up.

curious (or horny) individuals will feel compelled to click on the link to check out what it offers. if it has done that, the evony ads have done their job, as it is up to the main page to further sell the game. however, but using increasing amounts of cleavage in their adverts, they have earned the scorn of bloggers worldwide for their extremely distasteful ads that have nothing to do with the game. also, the adverts are becoming increasingly more and more like those web banners advertising for adult services.

i once read in the new paper (of all places) that neil french called ‘bad publicity’ the ‘holy grail’ of advertising. while it is true bad publicity (like that of the phallic burger king ad) will drive consumers to try your product, your product must be strong enough to sustain this interest.

this is where i delve into the gaming viewpoint of the game. and rip it apart to pieces.

i am gamer and i take pride in playing good games. and from what evony has shown me in its advertising, i can tell that the game is going to be of slip shod build. if a gaming developer cannot take pride in creative advertising for its games, what is to say that the game will be good? it is insulting to any decent gamer by propositioning the game like this. you don’t want to force dribble down my throat if i don’t want to play it. if you do so, i will reject it even more.

from ripping off the font AND gameplay from civilization, i expect them to get sued pretty soon.

/end rant.

when you have an xbox 360 in your home, you kind of lose the mood to blog (especially when you are trying to complete devil may cry 4 (which i finally did today!) – note to reader – blogger stopped blogging for a while to play guitar hero world tour.

i have been up to some things in san diego around the city just that i have (as usual) been rather lazy to blog. so before i had out to spring break (has it been that fast), let me recap over the last month.

mardi gras

i don’t feel like writing about mardi gras. i dont think any mardi gras can compare to the one in new orleans or brazil and i left a tad disappointed at san diego’s (which i had to pay 25 dollars to enter) mardi gras is the precusor to lent, where catholics fast for a period of 40 days before good friday (correct me if i am wrong) the idea is to have loads of fun before lent. there was a street parade downtown san diego but i just didn’t feel the spark in the event.

seaport village

off downtown, this quiant little place is akin to marina south (where extremely wealthy people park their yachts). but yet, due to the climate of san diego, you can lay down on the grass and have a picnic etc.

some sea bird…. thingy…

not seen in singapore

where they had awesome fudge!

seaworld

i didn’t know that shamu, seaworld’s famous whale, was a stage name given to all the killer whales in all the seaworlds. with that being say, sea world sadly too, left me underwhlemed. the shows featuring shamu were great, so did the one’s featuring a seal and a sealion (the walrus decided to misbehave during that show and escaped to the seating area!) but the park itself was sparse and disappointing. but one highlight was definetely being able to feed dolphins and pat them. dolphins, are extremely smart. unlike other animals who take longer to realise that you don’t have food anymore, dolphins will ignore you once you run out of feed. but still, i felt happy enough to be able to pat one of this incredible creatures. video to be up soon.

a rollercoaster in seaworld?

a shot of the rollercoast we secretly took at the photo booth. spot the singaporeans?

copied from underwater world??

could you say no to that face?

totally made my day

cool huh?

la jolla

san diego’s crown jewel is la jolla. nestled along rows of beautiful sea facing houses, where san diego’s rich and acclaimed call home is a place called children’s pool beach, where seals call as a haulout spot (its like a place where seals go if they want to chill out and slack). there hundreds of seals rest in the mid day sun, possibly after swimming after miles and miles (or not, maybe they are just lazy) the cost line along this beach is also beautiful, but don’t take my word for it! look at the pictures!

the day started when we rented a car and drove to la jolla. it was a chrysler gt cruiser.. good drive.

beats any view in sg

girl scout trying her best to sell us cookies

seals!

yes they ARE alive.

smart squirrel?

best burger place in san diego: hodad’s. if you can, gander a look at the menu.

i think san diegans have a thing for large onion rings.

wbc

the inaugural world baseball classic was held in 2006 with the finals being played in petco park in san diego. this year, the us hosted the wbc again, but the finals were shifted to dodger’s stadium in la. while petco park did not host the final this time, they did host the second round. even though baseball isn’t really the sport of my choice, it was just something you have to do when you are in US (unlike thad, wenxu, mad and jac, there isn’t a nba game close enough to justify going to – sure, LA Lakers are here but the prices are exorbitant – also-) i was fortunate enough to watch korea vs mexico though. to see the korean fans up close cheering Tae Han Min‘guk is awesome. also watching 3 home runs by the koreans was really lucky. sadly though, korea lost to japan in the finals.

this is petco park, home of the san diego padres, as well as host to the second round of the world baseball classic

mexican and korean fans are real wild.

can’t do without nachoes/hotdogs/drink at a baseball game

i read in the papers over the last weekend about an advertisement by dunkin donuts that raised controversy. interested in what might have cursed such a furore, i did a bit of research into the issue at hand. for the low down, here is a quick summary by new york times.

New York Times – 30/5/08- On May 7, Dunkin’ Donuts began running an ad on its Web site and others, featuring the celebrity chef Rachael Ray holding a cup of the company’s iced coffee while wearing a black-and-white fringed scarf. In the ad, which was shot in a studio, she is shown standing in front of trees with pink blossoms and a building with a distinctive spire.

On May 23, the conservative blog Little Green Footballs posted an item that likened Ms. Ray’s scarf to the type typically worn by Muslim extremists. The blog said that the ads “casually promote the symbol of Palestinian terrorism and the intifada, the keffiyeh, via Rachael Ray.”

Later that day, the conservative blogger Michelle Malkin chimed in, likening the scarf to a keffiyeh and calling it “jihadi chic.” Then the story, as they say on the Internet, went totally viral.

in short, conservatives in america are upset over the keffiyeh (its has not been conclusively proven it is a keffiyeh, but thats beside the point) and they say that dunkin donuts (which is an american donut brand for crying out loud!) is promoting muslim extremists. that is like saying al qaeda endorses living in caves, since their videos seem exclusively shot in them.

in a move i feel was unnecessary, dunkin donuts pulled the ad due to the criticism that was raised. after that, malkin ‘praised’ dunkin donuts for removing the ad. she further added:

“The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad.”

might as well write “the us army uniform, for the clueless, is the traditional symbol of america that has to come to symbolize the senseless war in Iraq”

it is not fair to equate clothing to ideology. and it is worse to think that a scarf looks anything more than a scarf. its clutching at straws, trying to find fault in everything around you. while yes the palestine people may say that that piece of cloth represents their solidarity, its just a piece of cloth! i can respect your views as a conservative, but the moment you see flaws and condemn every other world view but your own, you basically lend no credence to your train of thought.

its almost scary for one how a simple fashion choice in an advertisement for one of america’s favourite foods can turn into a pr disaster for dunkin donuts. but i am quite amused at the things people can nitpick on. likewise for another coffee chain.

starbucks also has made news. for the clueless, starbucks have changed their logo (not sure permanent or temporarily) in favour of a more retro looking sign. so whats the issue now?

now the issue is that the new logo is a 2 tailed siren which harks back to their original logo, without the bare chest this time. its supposed to represent how good their coffee taste: like a siren’s song.

ok despite the ugliness of the logo (i hate it, prefer the old green one: charms the youth better then the new one), someone called mark dice (who after reading his website, i have decided is too full of himself) who leads a ‘christian group’ (no i don’t think it is one.) based in san diego has found fault with this logo, claiming it “has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute”. please note that this ‘christian group’s’ founder is an avid youtuber and sells his products on his group’s website. (the media have been quoting the group as a christian group, but i beg to differ; its more conspiracy theory then anything else)

i agree that it looks really weird but its a mermaid with 2 tails – its pretty obvious right? its the same issue of trying to look too deep into things. and leave starbucks alone; i bet they will get enough stick from the world’s youth to tell them the new (or is it old?) logo is ugly as hell.

but its funny people can cook up a storm in a coffee cup.
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i am switching to coffee bean. how about you?

honestly, these days i can’t find the energy to blog about anything much.

its probably the work.

but since you are reading this let me introduce you to a cool new ad by nike:

apparently its directed by guy ritchie; good concept + good director = great ad.

enjoy.

p.s – i have watched this ad at least 5 times but it never ceases to amaze me.
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i know many of you would like be pushed by materazzi too.

cheers.